Shaffer Chapter Six

In Chapter Six, Shaffer demonstrated the definition of epidemic game by comparing two games: SimCity and Urban Science. The virtual environment that SimCity provides is not authentic, which does not resemble the living environment of the players; and the game doesn’t elicit the educated decisions from the players. As the author said, “Players act as virtual dictators” (Shaffer, 2006). It doesn’t provide the players with sufficient context to gather information or communicate with citizens or officials, nor it provides platform to justify players’ decisions. In contrast to SimCity, Urban Science does provide players with opportunities to think like professionals about the urban planning problems, which are ill-structured complex problems. The players can play in their own cities, which are familiar with them, and make amendment on them by gathering information from videotaped interviews of virtual representatives. Through iPlan, they can predict the effect of their measures and balance their actions. Such activities are not only fun but also thinking-provoking. The author argues that “epistemic games create virtual worlds based on existing professional training using key features as explicit markers rather than designing from scratch based on a set of principles extracted and abstracted from existing practica.” (Shaffer, 2006, p.179) He also emphasizes the importance of coherency: learning takes place only as part of a coherent system (Brown and Campione, 1996).
The author borrowed the concept "third place" to describe the position of epistemic games, which is between formal schooling and more traditional commercial games. This is the place where students and go after school and during vacations. it also create incentives for students to take advanced courses in technical subjects in school and facilitate the kind of thinking and learning that kids need in a changing world. Unlike in conventional schools, the facts, information and theories are learned and remembered because they were needed to play the game. Throughout the book, the author emphasizes that young people learn through epistemic games based on the way professionals train for innovative thinking. And it's important for adults to play computer and video games with their children in order to help them learn.